After Hi-BA camp, our family spent a couple days showing our camp speaker and his family around Tokyo. On our way from Kichijoji to Shinjuku, we set the diaper bag on the overhead rack. Then we did the dreaded deed… we got off the train without the bag. (Did I mention this was Shinjuku station, the busiest train station in the world? Like, the entire population of the city of Chicago goes through the station every day.)

We didn't notice it at first. It didn't feel like we were traveling particularly light since we had two kids and four extra people in tow. But when we got to the restaurant where we were headed, I asked Arthur for the diaper bag because I needed my nursing cover and a diaper for Theo.

Uh oh.

There was a sinking feeling, followed by a slight panic, followed by a quick mental plan of how to survive the next several hours without diapers, wipes, a nursing cover, pacifiers… Then there was the realization that my phone and wallet were also in the bag, as well as a few of Sam's things, including his most favorite treasured water bottle.

Arthur and I exchanged panicked glances and debated quickly whether to go register the lost bag right away or wait until after lunch. We decided that sooner was better, so he set off back to the station office. Sam soon realized what was missing and started to cry, so I prayed with him that God would get us our bag back. Today.

Meanwhile, Arthur was praying hard but wasn't having much success at the station office… all they could do was give him a phone number for a holding warehouse to call at the end of the day in case the bag was collected by station officials. (After thousands of people had ridden the train, of course.) As he prepared to return to us with the bad news, he felt a slight prompt to go over to the train platform for the return trains.

We had been on a Chuo line train, which ends at Tokyo station and then heads back across the city and out to the western suburbs. Arthur crossed over to the platform where a train was parked, delayed on it's return from Tokyo station. He ran along looking through the windows and stepping briefly into the train cars, in the infinitesimally small chance that this could be the same train, and…

wait for it…

There. was. our. bag.

It had traveled to Tokyo station and come back to Shinjuku. And the train had been delayed long enough for Arthur to hop on the train, grab the bag, and get back off before it headed off to Tachikawa, or Ome, or Takao, or wherever that particular train was headed.

When he came back to the restaurant with the bag and the story, we stopped to thank God. (This was immediately followed by a much-needed diaper change.) We praise him for answering prayer for something so small yet so complicated.

And as we reflect back we are reminded that the God who knows the number of hairs on our heads and sees each sparrow that falls can keep track of a diaper bag traveling solo across Tokyo. Surely his care for us is great!